Also, you have the particular problem of Northern Ireland where a substantial proportion of the population are technically foreigners ie Irish. I think that it’s the only “country” where that is the case. This, of course, means that substantial numbers of people do travel to the UK with no passports every year.

Schengen brings up other problems too. For instance, I was recently in Italy and the hotels there insist that you provide a passport if you’re an alien. However, it’s illegal to treat other European nationals as aliens so they’re breaking the law by doing so. Granted it was an airport hotel so most people would have passports but we actually drove there and didn’t.

You can return home on a driving license if you’re flying. The reason why the airlines look for passports is as a proof that you have the right to be in the country they’re flying you to as they get fined (around £2000 I believe) if they bring someone who isn’t allowed in the country.

The underlying problem is that neither the UK nor Ireland have compulsory ID cards which I think are in all the other European countries. I suspect that it’s this particular inconsistency that is underlying the issues noted in the original post.

Arnold : I guess this will be something they will be working on over the next year. I think you could just check people coming into and leaving Ireland. That would help. And if you were flying to Channel Islands from England and leaving to fly to Ireland, that you would have to present your passport at both locations (like you have to do already for other countries).

But Schengen is about removing the European land borders. Like you can go between Austria and Germany and no one will care. When you take a plane you still need to show ID, if you were flying between them. Now granted most people use their passport as ID, and they might accept your drivers license as one. So I guess this is like the anit-Schengen agreement.

What would they propose doing if, say, someone flew from Belfast to London sans passport and then tried to fly back to Dublin? Such routing can be surprisingly common. Legally, they presumably would have to deport such a person. Would that mean a free flight back to Dublin courtesy of the UK Home Office? If so, let’s see if we can hurry them up with this!

There’s also the matter of no passport being required to go to the various British islands (Channel Islands, Isle of Man and Gibraltar), most of which have flights to both the UK and Ireland and which together introduce numerous potential routings not currently requiring passports but with return flights which might.

As usual with the UK Home Office, they have forgotten about 1) Northern Ireland and 2) European law. From the first there’s the obvious practical problem of a land border with Ireland which is as secure as a sieve ever since said border was created. From the second, it would be illegal for them to require European nationals to have a biometric ID card if British citizens didn’t also require one.

Finally, there’s awkward sods like myself who would delight in screwing it all up by leaving on a British passport and arriving on an Irish one or vice versa.

yes I think is a good ideea, but the question is:

Is this the real reason?